ChatGPT wants my job. It can’t (and it won’t) have it.

Time to read: 4 minutes

As a professional and experienced copywriter, AI and how it will come to influence humanity has been the cause of much recent existential dread for Anthony McNamara, content creator at The Comms Crowd. In this post, he looks at ChatGPT, AI’s risks and benefits, and what’s in store for us as the technology advances.

As a professional and experienced copywriter, AI and how it will come to influence humanity has been the cause of much recent existential dread. Especially as mine is one of the professions the technology – especially the likes of ChatGPT – is gunning for. Admittedly, binging on every documentary and podcast the topic has to offer, all with contributions from long-time experts in the field has done little to assuage my fears.

The speed with which AI is developing is raising questions that those in power seem unable to answer. This is a problem. Once artificial general intelligence (AGI) is rolled out, the technology’s passage into maturity will be complete, and humanity’s relationship with robotic intelligence will become one where we are the dependents.

It will mark the most significant point in human history since the first homo sapiens discovered how to create fire. AGI, however, will be a blaze over which we could all too easily lose control forever. Hence the recent dread.

The dread gets real

When ChatGPT trampled onto the scene like a heavily caffeinated Wildebeest in a pensioners’ yoga class, I admit not thinking too much of it. “Another AI service that I can spend my free time interrogating on whether 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 is the more effective football formation. Big wow.”

But then I used it, and beads of sweat began forming on my expansive brow. I typed in a made-up, generic title and sat back in horror as the chatbot generated a grammatically sound and, on the face of it, relevant 1,000-word blog.

If it were dread I had experienced before, I wouldn’t even know the word to describe what I experienced at that moment. It was a feeling that lasted for weeks. The gig is up. Time to start thinking about re-training.

The importance of knowing your enemy

Having sought reassurance from family members, friends, and colleagues, I began to excavate my resolve and free it from the claws of the relentless Large Language Models. I love my job, and I’m not losing it to a set of precocious algorithms.

It was time for me to step into the ring with ChatGPT, and we were going bare knuckle.

Instead of using some generic blog title, I re-engaged ChatGPT and typed in the title of an actual blog a real client had asked me to write. The blog outline was separated into different sections and looked depressingly appropriate. Next, I gave the chatbot permission to write the blog in full, and within seconds, it cascaded down my screen.

However, upon reading the blog, an almost transcendental sense of elation washed over me. It was crap. Littered with repetition, from sentence openers to entire sentences, it had zero personality and was laughably light on credible facts and figures. It was crap.

Friend, not foe

With round one going emphatically to the human, I began to recalibrate my whole attitude toward ChatGPT. Although it has undeniably improved since 2022, its ability to produce quality content remains limited, to put it politely. But it does offer other functions that have since proved to be handy.

It is superb for beating writer’s block and has become essential for brainstorming ideas. I’ve also long since learnt that the ability to construct excellent prompts is the most important skill you can acquire when using any form of generative AI.

True though this may be, even with the most professional prompts, the resultant copy is not what any self-respecting copywriter or organisation would ever think to publish. But it can give a decent starting point, a handy blueprint for a competent human to improve upon radically.

In other words, generative AI can be considered a promising work-experience student, approaching their employer and saying, “Hi, I’ve done this for you to try and save you a bit of time.” And I, the employer in this dubious analogy, reply with, “Thank you. I can probably use some of this. Now, you run along and finish transcribing that video for me.”

Even if ChatGPT does become a little too self-assured in the future, it faces another problem even more formidable than me.

The search engines won’t stand for it

When the likes of Google cottoned on that people were stuffing their websites with keywords to dope their SEO, the backlash was ruthless. Many websites were penalised so heavily with SERP (Search Engine Results Page) relegations they never properly recovered.

Expect the same for AI content. Indeed, a raft of AI content detector tools are already sweeping the marketplace, and it seems to be a matter of time before they’re integrated into search engine result generators. The last thing any search engine provider wants is for its users to be pummelled with a load of robot content during their cyber surfing sessions.

Apart from the inevitability of this development is the delicious irony – AI saving the livelihoods of copywriters from AI. *chef’s kiss*.

ChatGPT knows its place. For now.

I don’t know what the future holds for ChatGPT. That’s the one thing that’s still quite scary – no one really does.

However, I do know that in its present form, it can’t respond to detailed briefs as competently as a human copywriter. It can’t understand the unspoken reactions of clients during calls. It can’t offer original insight on any topic, question a client’s approaches or ideas, or inject personality (unless it’s pretending to be a well-known human).

Mercifully, it also seems to understand all of this. With ChatGPT draped against the ropes, sweating and bloodied, I asked it directly if it was coming for my job.

Its response?

“As an AI language model, I don’t have the ability to predict the future. However, it’s unlikely that ChatGPT or any other AI language model will completely replace copywriters. While AI can be helpful in generating content and assisting with certain tasks, copywriting involves creativity, critical thinking, and a deep understanding of language and communication. These are skills that are difficult for AI to replicate, and human copywriters are likely to remain an important part of the industry.”

Maintain that attitude, ChatGPT, and you and I will get along just fine.

Let’s talk shop

Corporate culture: If you’re going to improve it, talk about it

Time to read: 4 minutes

Anthony McNamara, content creator at The Comms Crowd, looks at why companies need to talk about their corporate culture and values. And why it should be part of every communications plan.

Businesses must regularly monitor and assess seated KPIs to perform optimally. Typically, these KPIs surround functions such as sales, technology infrastructure, PR and marketing, and client relationships.

Critical though these metrics are, they are the supporting walls of the corporate edifice. Without a solid foundation, they are liable to collapse.

That foundation is the corporate culture. Many businesses neglect corporate culture in favour of shorter-term pursuits, yet developing a strong, inclusive, and supportive culture is the key to unlocking maximum potential.

However, simply embedding a strong culture is not enough if you want to reap its rewards; you have to talk about it.

In this blog, we look at the benefits of a great corporate culture. How a selection of Comms Crowd clients developed theirs, and how we’ve helped spread news of their successes to the masses.

The ‘Great Resignation’ has brought corporate culture to the fore

Developing a robust corporate culture was always important, but the Covid-19 pandemic made it critical in the years that followed.

In what became known as the ‘Great Resignation’, employees voluntarily quit their jobs in unprecedented numbers. Between July and September 2021 alone, over 400,000 UK workers left their jobs.

Employees frequently cited a hostile working environment as a reason for leaving. Indeed, such was the prevalence of the phenomenon that ‘toxic workplaces’ became a trending topic nationwide.

The disruption of the Covid years prompted fresh expectations among the workforce regarding what behaviours they are prepared to tolerate. A poor or neglected corporate culture may have been grudgingly endured before the virus escaped ground zero. Times have changed since.

Quorsus, a strategic financial services consultancy and former Comms Crowd client, led discussions on the dangers of toxic company cultures and how to avoid them. Indeed, the company itself was established on a vow that its corporate culture would be positively imbued and reinforced by core values.

Consultancies must prioritise embedding a robust culture and strong values because their people are their product. Quorsus will tell you that it has gone some way to explaining the extraordinary success.

We amplified Quorsus’ approach and message, ensuring its impact was felt across its sector and beyond.

A robust corporate culture breeds productivity

Ask any education professional, and they’ll confirm that praise is essential for a child’s development. The chemical reaction experienced from being told they’ve done a great job immediately boosts a child’s sense of self-worth. It encourages them to continue working hard so they might experience it again.

In other words, it has the power to supercharge their productivity.

Yet, something changes when we reach adulthood and enter the world of work. It’s as though we forget these reward centres exist and how powerful they are. Consequently, praise is often replaced by criticism and our inner child – still so easily motivated by encouraging words – is swallowed by a vortex of ruthless expectation.

Ignoring this reality is short-sighted, to say the least. A national Workplace Culture Survey of US employees found that 63% of respondents claim that workplace culture directly impacts their organisation’s success.

Abundant opportunities drive productivity. When former client and friend of The Crowd dxw, a leading employee-owned digital agency, launched its Returners’ Programme, it broke new ground.

dxw partnered with The Comms Crowd to share and disseminate its story with potential stakeholders. The coverage was such that dxw has become recognised as an expert provider of digital public services and opportunities to those who may feel they have passed them by.

Together, we ensured the world knew of dxw’s leadership position in creating a positive, inclusive culture. In fact, it became one of the first companies to introduce gender pronouns into email signatures.

dxw’s small size notwithstanding, the firm won an array of company culture awards, helping to attract exceptional like-minded talent. Essential for any fast-growing technology enterprise.

Positive cultures promote development

‘The Great Resignation’ jolted many organisations into action. Not wanting to lose their top talent, these firms put a renewed focus on facilitating professional development. They recognised that avoiding high employee turnover requires more than just an amenable working environment.

Before any recruitment drive, senior leaders review factors such as pay scales, perks, and benefits. However attractive they can make each perk if the organisation is renowned as a place where careers stagnate, the drive is doomed to fail.

As such, building a positive culture requires embedding opportunities and routes to success at all levels of the business. The best cultures underpin this by committing to personal development as much as professional development. Achievements are properly rewarded, and a healthy work/life balance is respected.

Another former client, JDX Consulting, since acquired by Delta Capita, attributed its sustained global success to a carefully developed culture. It promoted inclusivity, coaching, and empowerment, allowing the firm to attract diverse, high-quality talent from all walks of life.

By entrusting The Comms Crowd with articulating and sharing its methodologies, JDX became the corporate culture benchmark within its sector before being acquired by Delta Capita.

We then worked with JDX to promote its Festival of Learning, a professional development programme set up by the firm’s HR division. The initiative gives employees the space and tools to grow professionally at their own pace and take control of their career progress.

Showcase your corporate culture with The Comms Crowd

Our clients love us because we’re adept at getting their messages and successes into the public domain and the publications their stakeholders engage with.

It deserves to be celebrated if you have invested time and money into developing a corporate culture that breeds energy, achievement, opportunity, and happiness.

Moreover, potential talent, partners, investors, and clients want to know what you’ve done and are doing. Speak to The Comms Crowd today; our internal comms consultant, PRs, and writers can ensure they will.

Let’s talk shop

Content Writing: A personal story of love and indignation

Time to read: 3 minutes

Comms Crowd content creator Anthony McNamara takes a stand on content writing for your audience – not the algorithms.

Different professions attract people for different reasons. Law, for example, will attract those enticed by the potential earnings as much as it will attract those simply wanting to see justice done. Providing both parties do their jobs well, the motivation isn’t particularly important. Content writing, however, is a different beast.

For the love of words

For most content writers (and I make this claim with no supporting empirical data), the primary motivator is a desire to make a living doing what we love – writing.

The thrill of concocting a clever metaphor or constructing a killer closing paragraph is palpable when I achieve either. More so when I receive an emphatic “good job” from the client.

And yet, as my years penning words for cash pass, I am increasingly motivated by a sense of indignation. I still see so much content that isn’t written for the reader’s enjoyment or enlightenment, and it grinds my gears.

I should pause here to stress that I am not taking a potshot at my content-writing brethren. Most of what I see that infuriates me has not been written by a professional content writer. Or, it has, but clearly under the duress of stringent SEO objectives and anxious marketing managers keen for something – anything – to be published.

SEO at the price of coherency

Much content is still produced with only Google algorithms in mind and not the actual human beings who have to read ‘cheap, reliable laptop’ 17 times in a 400-word blog.

It’s not just SEO, though. Many businesses are shrewd enough to know that regular content output is good. But even when they have nothing much to say, they force their writers to say it anyway.

For example, I once read a blog about resolving office conflicts. One shard of wisdom contained was to “walk away and count to 10” in the event of an argument. Basically, lesson one from ‘Anger Management for Toddlers’ but for grown, professional adults with mortgages, lower back pain, and NutriBullets. If I’d been so enraged by this banality, how many others had been, too? How many of those were potential customers?

It’s true that writing with the algorithms as your target audience will get you high up on the results pages. It’s equally true that regularly updated website content will make you appear committed and active. But if the final destination is a hastily cobbled, anti-climactic piece, it will reflect poorly on your brand.

Of course, this should not be the sole motivation for wanting to produce great content. Motivation should also come from knowing that word will soon get around if you become a reliable repository of well-crafted insight. With the right strategy backing it up, regular quality content can elevate your brand to the position of influencer, aka Content Marketing Shangri-La.

Finding your content is one thing; enjoying it is quite another

The point I’m trying to make (and it’s a fair criticism that I’ve gone around the houses making it) is that your written content should always be an illuminating, engaging read. Even if your content has been written with SEO in mind, or because it’s been a fortnight since your last blog, always assume that someone, somewhere, will take the time to read it.

Speak to that person. Respect their intelligence and try to involve them in the conversation. If you have no new knowledge at that moment to share, revisit something old and put a fresh, entertaining spin on it. And if, for whatever reason, you’re unable to do this, pass it over to someone who can.

I’ll end this semi-rant with some advice: remember the following: When a potential customer is reading your content, you are in dialogue with them at that moment in time. You are giving them reasons why your services (and yours alone) are the ones they need.

The question is, how useful are those reasons, and how well are you getting them across?